just trying to explain why not everyone is jumping on the age gap wagon- because there need to be other people who are dealing with the other issues. Sometimes when one aspect is pushed with lots of PR it pushes other issues to the side so that people stop thinking about them.
Sorry, that’s just not a good reason to ignore the disparity, or tell people that they they’re demonizing women, they’re in denial about other issues, or that there isn’t a shidduch crisis, etc.
I think you made some good points earlier:
Why does it take so long for some people to find each other? As ubiquitin stated, what part of the process is going wrong? Is the problem in the networking, getting the right names? The actual dating process? The attitude to dating/marriage? For different people, there will be different answers. We need to figure out what goes wrong and how to solve it- better preparation, dating coaching, helping youngsters figure out who they are and what they really need in a spouse before they start dating, improved networking- especially for OOTers and those who wouldn’t be getting redt shidduchim otherwise, maybe making use of databases.
I think dating coaches and databases are good ideas. Especially dating coaches. It seems to me that it’s far too common for singles (especially older singles) to turn down good shidduch prospects for what seems like, from an outsider’s perspective, issues that could be worked on.
Of course, “helping youngsters figure out who they are and what they really need in a spouse before they start dating” is a good idea, although sometimes they need to start dating until they figure it out; the thing is, that’s not specifically a shidduch issue, it’s more of a life issue.